


Honesty will wreck this point that we made

by jannika



Series: Float like a pretty box of your evil [1]
Category: Descendants (2015), The Isle of Lost - Melissa de la Cruz
Genre: M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:11:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jannika/pseuds/jannika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>A kiss for a treasure, Jay thinks.</i> One of the first things Jay is taught in life is how to steal.</p><p>Or, loosely, five things Jay learns on the island and one he learns in Auradon.  Jay/Carlos. Feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honesty will wreck this point that we made

**Author's Note:**

> Because I've been thinking about these two for about a week now since this movie showed up on my OnDemand and wanted to write something for them. Brought to you by that time Jay flirted with absolutely everyone, often as a means to steal from them, the general darkness of their world, the lack of rules I assume the island has, and most of all by the way Jay smiles at Carlos when Mal talks about the things that make him happy.
> 
> Some (teenage, but canon-compliant with the island's lack of rules and supervision, honestly) non-explicit sexual activity. Mostly feelings.

_“Stealing girls’ hearts was practically a hobby. But it wasn’t as fun as stealing other things, since hearts came with too many strings attached.”_

Jay starts stealing before he learns to read, before he learns how to spell his own name, before he learns just how spoiled a piece of fruit or bread can be and still be edible. He learns to steal when he’s still wobbly on his legs, still learning the lay of the island, still hiding under tables in the shop and listening to people talk about things he doesn’t understand, not yet. He learns when he’s so small he can fit in corners and hide when footsteps come without being seen. He learns that a smile, a pout, a laugh, and a quick hand will get him anything he can reach. He learns to lie, to say he was just lost when he does get caught, he learns to run with treasures in his shirt and pockets. He learns how to make his lips tremble so that people take pity on him and let him in, or let him close enough. He learns to smile at other kids and pretend he’s listening, looking them all over for something to bring home. He learns who on the island is easily tricked: minions and lesser villains, their families, people who often seem confused to be living this way at all.

Jay learns all of these tricks before he learns to count them all, to add up his haul; he knows what gems shine, knows what looks like it still has magic, what people will pay and trade for, long before he knows the value of money. It’s an everyday lesson, out on his own with a smile and a secret, hiding in all the small places and saying all the lines he’s practiced. He makes sure to not go home until his pockets are heavy, always hoping to have that thing that will make his father smile, that big score, that thing that his father swears will change their lives. He never does. Every day it’s not enough, so every day it’s back out, as far as his legs will carry him.

Because maybe the biggest thing he learns, maybe the lesson he will carry even longer than lying or stealing or just how to smile his way out of trouble, is the answer to the question he asks himself. Before he can write a single word with his own hand, Jay wonders what would be worse, what would upset his father more: if he came home with his pockets empty, or if he never came home at all. Hidden in an alley door, so small he doesn’t even have to crouch and stomach growling, he knows the answer. And he always, always remembers it.

It’s remembering that that he makes his first really big score- not The Big One, not something that actually makes his father happy for more than a few minutes, but the first thing he can’t even fit in his pockets. There’s an old lady who lives alone surrounded by the things she used to have. Jay isn’t sure who she is, but she invites him in when he compliments the weeds growing in her front lawn. She lets him in, and while she’s excused herself to the kitchen, his eyes find a clock. It’s ticking and whirling and the metal pieces on it shine brighter than almost anything Jay has ever seen. It has gears he can see, and watching them interlock over and over and hearing the tick looks like what he thinks magic might be. He thinks this clock is _beautiful_ , and even though it’s almost as big as he is, he wants it.

He’s running his hands over it when the old lady comes back, and she must see the look on his face, because she laughs at him and says he can have it, if he’ll spend the afternoon with her. So he stays, and he hears about the princess who had ruined her life and her plans, and after she asks him if he’ll give her a kiss on the forehead. Jay has never kissed anyone in his life, never been kissed or hugged, but he’s seen enough pictures, in books and other things scavenged from Auradon, that he knows what to do. Like someone who lives somewhere else far away with different rules greeting a grandparent, he kisses her forehead and allows his hair to be ruffled.

And he walks home with a clock that seems like magic. A kiss for a treasure, he thinks. Another lesson, another way to lie, another thing to keep. The happiness over the clock has faded by later that evening, but the way he feels carrying it into the shop, like he’s doing his job, like he’s doing what he’s meant to, a feeling he will later know to call _pride_ \- that also stays with him. That’s also a lesson he keeps.

***

When Jay is ten, he sometimes feels eyes on him. Not just the distrustful eyes of sellers whose merchandise keeps ending up on his father’s shelves, but of the other kids on the island. Sometimes when he smiles at someone as one hand is grabbing whatever he can reach, there is a giggle that he sees out of the corner of his eye belongs to an evil step-granddaughter, who blushes as she meets his eye. Sometimes when he’s running as fast as he can not to get caught, he runs right past other island kids who make comments now. Little things that are maybe jealous or are maybe something else.

He’s sitting on a broken wall, counting today’s grabs and waiting for Mal to see if she has anything to trade today, when the evil step-granddaughter who has giggled the most, the one with the blush in her cheeks, comes up to him, tucking her hair behind her ear. She sits closer and she whispers, even though there is no one else around to hear. She tells him she’s been watching him and she that she _likes to watch him_ , and Jay thinks, _flirting_. And he thinks that, like a well-placed smile or pout, like a good lie, maybe he could fill his pockets this way, too. So he smiles back, and he holds her hand, and he tells her stories that make her laugh- because he is, he has been told, _excessively charming_ , and he’s pretty sure that’s what you need to flirt. So he does, and when his eyes trace the clip in her hair, a bronze-looking barrette that might have come from a barge but also might be from before, he takes a chance and plays with a bit of her hair. She blushes again, and giggles that same giggle.

And Jay thinks, _a kiss for a treasure_.

So he leans forward and kisses her cheek and puts one hand on her shoulder while the other sneaks the barrette out of her hair. Her eyes flutter closed and he slips it into his pocket and lies to her. She lets him. She walks away at the sound of Mal’s footsteps, never noticing. Jay doesn’t answer Mal when she asks what that was about, disgust on her face at the giggling part. He keeps it like another lesson. Mal rolls her eyes, and when they go to trade Jay doesn’t pull the barrette back out. He keeps that too.

Days later she is still giggling at him, even as she buys her own barrette back from his father’s store, telling him in another too-close whisper that her mother had been furious it was gone. So Jay lies to her again, and she lets him again, and he thinks that if you say the right things, that maybe with _charm_ and _flirting_ and _kissing_ , you can take what you want and people won’t even be mad when they discover it.

***

The thing about reputations is that people think they know what to expect when they see you coming. The thing about them, Jay has learned, is that they make people plan what to do about you. Make people have their own outcomes in mind. By the time Jay is fourteen, he has one very strong reputation and is fast developing another. The whole island knows him as a thief, although in a place like this that is no great distinction. A thief among thieves, even an excellent thief, is hardly remarkable. His other reputation, well. That, it seems, makes people talk more. That one, people remember.

It starts because he’s getting too old for little boy charm, too old to con most adults with a pout and skinned knees- even the most dimwitted of minions have little sympathy for the kid who has been stealing from them for a decade, for the kid who is taller than they are by now. So he goes to those alleys, those back rooms and warehouses with reputations of their own. And he watches and he learns, because no one on the island cares how old you are, cares if he watches the way people trade not goods but their bodies. He watches as people trade sex, sometimes for things and sometimes for fun and sometimes for reasons he can’t quite grasp ( _Validation_ , he’ll think later, of pasts of glamour when people flocked to them, of the lives when these people’s beauty matched their wickedness.) He watches people escape the crumbling and the ugliness and the rot for a while, watches dances and flirtation and kisses that don’t end. He hears sounds behind curtains, he pages through old magazines with graphic pictures and detailed stories. Magazines he cannot imagine came from Auradon, that might be old, or from somewhere else, or being made right here on the island somehow, honestly. 

Jay has read books about Auradon, about life in the kingdoms, about True Love’s Kiss and High Moral Standards, about Courtship and Respectability. But this is not Auradon, this is not a tale of good or love or romance. This is his world, and here, he thinks, this like flirting and kissing, this is like charm, this is another lesson. And after the first time, after he slides his hand in a classmate’s skirt in an abandoned classroom, working his fingers until she’s gasping and closing her eyes and every piece of jewelry, every single accessory she has is in his pockets- 

After that his other reputation starts, and girls who know full well he’ll rob them, girls whose parents have warned them away, invite him right into houses he’s not actually allowed into. And he lies. And says things he’s read in magazines about this maybe being like magic. And heads fall back and eyes glaze and he steals everything he can get his hands on, and they let him. And it’s. Maybe not fun, because he doesn’t have time for fun, because that’s not the idea, but he feels pride about both of his reputations.

And if sometimes there are girls with fast brains that have clever plots and witty insults, girls who seem to want him to stay, if sometimes he wonders what it would be like to stay, he brushes that off. He swallows it down and he brings home more than he has in years, and his father is- not happy, but not as miserable as usual. And that’s what matters. Steal what you can however you can, the most important thing is what you can bring home, always. So it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if sometimes after he gets sad looks, or notes asking why he won’t talk to them anymore, doesn’t matter because he doesn’t have feelings about any of it. Doesn’t matter because there are always more girls coming to him, more things to grab and stock shelves with, more. Doesn’t matter because the more there are girls who would be heartbroken if villains had hearts capable of that, the more his reputation grows. The more he can bring home.

***

With a reputation, there can sometimes be- not consequences, exactly, because what consequences can there be on an island of evildoers. On an island where the only law is that you cannot leave, consequence is not a concept that holds much weight. Besides, a person would have to care for there to really be consequences, and Jay does not care. So there are not consequences, but things can sometimes take an unexpected turn, a twist. But Jay has learned to take all the unexpected and all the twists and turn them into lessons for survival.

He’s fifteen and he has a reputation and shelves to stock. He’s fifteen, and Mal says he’s going to run out of skirts to go under and pants to unzip, with a roll of her eyes and a tight smile as they trade stolen trinkets. He’s fifteen and he thinks he’s glad that Mal is a girl and it’s different with her, not just because she doesn’t play that sort of game, but because seeing her everyday, these trades and this talking, complaining together and sometimes plotting together, is a thing he wants to save and have. (For survival, of course, strategically, because having a partner in crime is invaluable in a place like this.) He’s fifteen and she is the closest thing to- to being close to him, that he’s ever known, and she’s wrong.

He’s not going to run out of anything anytime soon. He’s doing a class project with the son of someone who comes into his father’s store a lot, a son who is a year older than him, a son who keeps looking at him like, well. The way he is looking at Jay is familiar and obvious, and, yeah. There is a possibly-silver dining set sitting in the kitchen they’re in- most of the pieces are still there, and even though it’s stained and smudged and chipped, Jay wants it. So he looks at the boy sitting across the table from him, and thinks, _why not_?

He pushes aside the assignment they’re working on and puts on his best smile. He flirts. He lies. He slides closer. He whispers secret stories that never really happened. And he gets back a blush and darting eyes, and when he slides his hand onto a thigh, he is rewarded with a gulp that sounds like _please_. It’s easy and it’s quick and his father is pleased with the dining set when he brings it home later.

Jay thinks it’s another lesson, another trick, another way he can get what he wants. He can flirt with anyone, he can use his charm on anyone, and it feels sort of powerful. It’s a bit more secret with boys than with girls- or, not a secret, because those are really no good here either, secrets are for people with shame or guilt, or other things they’ve been told not to feel. That Jay doesn’t feel. So not a secret, just not quite as loud, but fairly frequent. 

(Years later, in a place so far from where he is now, when he’s older and sitting on a soft bed, surrounded by soft things and people with soft feelings, one of them will point out, gently, that there was something backwards in how Jay looked at at all. And Jay will think everything on the island was that way, backwards and twisted, and he’ll allow himself to put his head on the shoulder of his favorite person. But that is a bridge, a dragon, a trophy, and what feels like a lifetime away from right now.)

***

Jay doesn’t want anything from Carlos. Well, no. That’s not true, not really. There is plenty he could take, so many things from that house that would fetch a lot. There are those coats, all that fur that his father has already asked about, but Jay doesn’t take a single one. He doesn’t touch a single thing, not the fur and not any of Carlos’ inventions and machines. He doesn’t know why.

Maybe it’s because those coats are not Carlos’, but his mother’s, and Jay has met her enough times now to know what she’s like, to know she loves those more than she will ever love Carlos. Jay doesn’t know what would happen to to Carlos if one of them went missing. Doesn’t know what she’d do. But. It can’t be that, because Jay doesn’t care about any of that. It’s not like anyone loves him either. It’s not like he wants anyone to. It’s not like he cares what happens to Carlos, not like it’s any of his business, not like it would affect him. Or, more importantly, like anything that would happen to Carlos would affect what he’s able to bring in, what he’s able to steal.

Maybe it’s because those inventions and things are Carlos’, and it seems like they are all he has. In his head, Jay keeps seeing Carlos hug an old pillow, the one Evie’d brought him. He hears Evie asking him if he knew Carlos had never had a pillow before. But it can’t be that either, because again, Jay doesn’t care. Because it’s not like he’s ever had a single thing in his whole life that his father wouldn’t, and hasn’t, sold in a heartbeat.

Maybe it’s because, after the disaster of their quest for Maleficent's scepter, when it’s just the two of them, Carlos is the one to put a shaking hand out to him. Carlos puts a shaking hand out to Jay, scoots closer like he’s full of nerves and want, and Jay feels himself suck in his breath. Carlos touches him first and it’s different in so many ways Jay can’t put words to. It can’t really be that either, because it just doesn’t make any sense at all for that to stop him from pocketing whatever he can.

Maybe it’s because Carlos is the smartest person Jay knows, because he’s clever and quick and weirdly useful on a mission. Because he seems like a good person to keep around. Because he sees right through it when Jay lies and it unnerves him. But it can’t really quite be that either- that shouldn’t keep those furs from his father’s shop.

Maybe, Jay thinks, as they have their hands all over each other again, as they touch each other at the same time, fumbling and jerking, it’s because people have sex for all sorts of reasons. Because sometimes people have arrangements that are just about the sex. So he thinks that if he keeps finding time to be alone with Carlos, and if they keep finding their hands in each other’s pants or their legs slotted together and hips grinding, if he feels himself the most off balance he’s ever felt around Carlos, that they just have one of those arrangements. That he’s not taking anything from Carlos because what he wants here is different. An arrangement, he thinks, is okay. There are no feelings in an arrangement, no anything but exactly what it seems to be. And so if he doesn’t take anything, it’s because he wants this arrangement to last. For what it is. 

And if he doesn’t lie to Carlos, not really. If sometimes after they sit together breathing heavy and just being. If he likes, maybe, to just listen while Carlos talks about ideas and inventions, well. If he finds himself looking over his shoulder when the four of them are out doing something dangerous to make sure Carlos is okay. It’s all just to keep up the arrangement. (And that is a lie, somehow, and he knows it. He’s just not sure who, exactly he’s lying to.)

The lesson, he tells himself, is that sometimes what you can get from other people is exactly what you give them, and that’s okay. It’s the way he and Mal have always been, really- the exchange is just different.

***

In Auradon, people date. They say romantic things to each other and kiss chastely in brightly-lit rooms. They hold each other’s hands and talk about futures together. It’s so radically different and jarring, just like everything else about this place. It takes Jay a while, in between joining a team and realizing that maybe with Mal and Evie and Carlos he was already on one, to think about what it all means for him. It’s when Mal says she’s _in love_ and Evie giggles at a boy who doesn’t even own a castle. It’s when Ben assures them that they’re safe here, that if they choose this, they can leave behind rotten fruit and their parents’ demands and broken glass and plotting that goes nowhere. They don’t have to be the island or their parents. It’s all a lot when it hits Jay, when he thinks about what that means for him. For his arrangement with Carlos.

They don’t have to be the island, but Jay thinks they’ll never really be this place either. They’ll never grow this fully soft, never not have shadows in them, he’ll never not wake up and forget he doesn’t need to steal all he can before he comes home. He thinks about it, about all these girls here, about all these new people here, about dancing and flirting and being charming, about all of these people who are in his life now. He thinks he could charm them, any one of these people. He thinks he doesn’t want to. He thinks about keeping things and letting things go. 

He thinks about Mal saying that stealing things doesn’t make him happy. And he’s never really thought about _being happy_ before, that’s never been the point. But he thinks there is something else that makes him happy, something other than the team. He thinks there is something from the island, from that life, that he wants to keep. Maybe just change a little.

So he grabs for Carlos one day when he walks into their dorm room. He grabs for him and he pushes him against a wall and he kisses him. He kisses him and kisses him and doesn’t want to stop. He kisses him and they don’t do that, not really, not very often, because that’s not the arrangement, that’s not what they do. But he kisses Carlos until Carlos is fisting his hand in the fabric of his shirt and pulling on his neck with his other hand. He kisses Carlos like he means it because he does. When they pull back, Jay doesn’t lean up or back away, he puts his forehead on Carlos’, like people in one of the movies they’ve watched in this dorm room, like they’ve seen people do in hallways and dancefloors. Like romance. Carlos watches him with wide nervous eyes, but doesn’t move his hands. Jay’s pulse is racing and he knows Carlos’ is too. 

He doesn’t quite know how to say his feelings yet, doesn’t know how to just get out words about why he wants to keep this, wants to keep Carlos. But he thinks, he hopes, that maybe Carlos gets it anyway. He thinks maybe it’s like he and Carlos stole from each other, still more a fair trade than stealing, even if it’s feelings. Even if it’s hearts. Carlos nods, like he does get it, like he knows what this means, and he moves a hand from Jay’s shirt to his hand, to lace their fingers, and Jay breathes, because it feels like Carlos is agreeing. Carlos leans to kiss him again, still against the wall, kissing Jay over and over, more intense than before, somehow.

And it hits Jay. He’s kissing Carlos and running a hand over Carlos’ face and he thinks he understands. He had not known, had never known, had never had any reason to know, that a person could be a treasure. It’s an expression, he thinks, to _treasure someone_ , and he’s never thought that was a real thing. But in this moment with Carlos, who can make magic from science, with Carlos who can always make him laugh, with Carlos who knows everything about him, with Carlos who is generous despite having nothing, with Carlos who stood up to his mother and conquered his fears and, with Carlos who is, well. Carlos. With Carlos, Jay is certain that a person can be a treasure. 

_A kiss for a treasure_. He’d been right all along, just maybe a little twisted. A little backwards. He’s got it now.

A kiss for a treasure. A person can be a treasure. 

It’s a lesson Jay never, ever lets go of, even as so many from his old life fall away. This one always feels true and important and real.


End file.
